Chico woman builds dream house made of straw bales

A house on Irene Street in Chico is being built with hay bales as insulation on Saturday. Homeowner Margaret Dietz said she always wanted to build a straw bale house and now that dream is coming true.(Jason Halley/Staff Photo)

CHICO — Margaret Dietz is building a straw house no big bad wolf will be able to blow down.

She always wanted to build a straw bale house but because of city laws regarding sewage, she wasn't able to build a new home on her property on Irene Street.

Last year, the city put in a sewage line that allowed her to build.

Now the dream of straw in her walls is coming true.

"It's a simple little house," she said as she walked through the building which is a little more than halfway complete.

The posts and beams are up and bales, not actually of straw, but of rice stalks, are packed tightly together and held in place with rebar drilled through and set apart every 24 inches. The foundation has heated cement and the doors and windows are in place. After plumbing, wiring and HVAC are installed, the bales will be plastered over and the house will be near complete.

It should be done in a couple months, Dietz said. She expects to be able to move in by mid-April.

When Dietz realized she would be able to build on her property, she started communicating with Tom Chase, a designer and home builder who has made several other homes out of bales.

Chase designed the two-bedroom house with inspiration from modernist real estate developer Joseph Eichler, with each room opening onto a broad patio on the northwest side of the structure.

"I have the big McDonald's sign, but oh well," she said while surveying the view from the front porch.

The house has cost more to build than other lumber homes Dietz and her husband built before he passed away.

"I wish it cost less," she said with a chuckle.

Although rice stalk bales are less expensive than lumber, the construction process has been more labor intensive. The money should be refunded in the future when Dietz has to pay up to 75 percent less for heating and cooling.

"You can see how dense the walls are," she said, touching one of the roughly 24 inch-wide bales.

Because the bales are so dense, they don't let much oxygen in and don't present a fire hazard once covered over in plaster. They also provide excellent insulation and block outdoor noise. Moisture can be a problem, but the exposed walls are covered in plastic to protect from the recent rains.

The rice stalks are waste products that can't be used for feeding livestock, she said.

"A cow might like the smell," Dietz said. "There's no food value."

When she and Tiffany, her pet Chihuahua, move into the home, Dietz will have her own pottery studio in the garage.

While she is happy to have a studio for forming pottery, Dietz said she also loves watching the house go up.

"I view this house as a gigantic art project," she said. "Full of wonder, it's really exciting."